What's in a name? Not much, apparently, for companies dabbling with Web applications on their corporate networks.

Although Sun Microsystems has spent the past 18 months rechristening the bulk of its Web software suite under the banner of its Sun ONE brand, the marketing message has not made everyone a convert. Sun devotees are sticking with Sun. Others remain unswayed by Sun's platform hoopla.

"I'm not into the marketing hype," says Herman Baumann, executive director of strategic development for the American Hospital Association, which is launching a Sun iPlanet server application to knit together content from the Web sites of 18 affiliate groups. "I just know the server works great."

For some tech departments, though, old habits die hard. McGee Corp., a Matthews, N.C.-based manufacturer of gas station canopies, at least two years ago experimented with Sun's Forte softwarealso part of the Sun ONE suiteto develop applications for use in the company's manufacturing operations. However, McGee ultimately scrapped Forte and returned to systems offered under the Microsoft .NET platform, says Tim Ferrell, chief technologist for McGee. The reason: Ferrell's team was more accustomed to programming in Microsoft's Visual Basic.

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Even Java allegiances don't seem to make much difference in promoting Sun ONE. While retailer Home Depot is heavily committed to Java, the company last year opted to use Web applications from IBM WebSphere instead. Sun did not even make the short list in a Home Depot shop already densely populated with IBM gear, says Curtis Chambers, senior systems architect for the Atlanta-based company.

Sun's long-time adherence to open standards still plays well with some, though. At Detroit's Wayne State University, a campus network serving nearly 40,000 professors and students provides personalized Web-based services largely using iPlanet software.

Wayne State, however, kept an industrial strength messaging server from MirrorPoint in place even as it expanded its commitment to Sun ONE nearly everywhere else on its network. The ability to plug equipment from an outside vendor into the Sun-dominated system shows that Sun is serious in its intentions to make Sun ONE a platform that supports multiple vendors, says John Camp, deputy chief information officer for Wayne State.

"The fact that Sun offers a package of components for Internet-based applications is very important to us," Camp says. "But you also want to be able to mix and match components. That's the theory behind Sun ONE, and it holds up."